Printmaking Class at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts

I'm taking a multi-week printmaking class at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA).  I'm beyond geeked out and excited about it.  I've done a ton of printmaking but never with a real live printing press!!!  We are going to be focusing on three kinds of printmaking: monoprint/monotype, drypoint, and relief printing.  The first class was all about monoprints and monotypes.

I found a great explanation on the difference between monotypes and monoprints on monoprints.com.

A monotype is essentially ONE of a kind: mono is a Latin word which means ONE and type means kind. Therefore, a monotype is one printed image which does not have any form of matrix. On the other hand, a monoprint has some form of basic matrix.

The process of creating a monoprint or a monotype is the same, but when doing monotypes, the artist works on a clean and unetched plate; with monoprints, however, there is always a pattern or part of an image which is constantly repeated in each print. Artists often use etched plates or some kind of pattern such as lace, leaves, fabric or even rubber gaskets, to add texture. In this case, having a repeated pattern, we have a monoprint.

 Here's my working space (and some classmates):

You can see some printing plates on the far left, ink palette in the middle, and tools all around!

Here is the printing press:

Here are some plates before printing:

And the prints from those plates:

You can get a "ghost" or second print from your plates.  I decided to get a little fancy with my ghosts and add color and other elements between printing:

First print:

Adding color and other elements:

"Ghost" print:

Set of two first prints with the "ghosts" below:


I had a ton of fun and my brain is humming with ideas.  I look forward to sharing more adventures in printmaking as class continues!

Thanks for stopping by!